We were expecting rain also today due to the typhoon. However, the typhoon quickly passed early in the morning and the weather forecast is sunny with zero percentage of rain. The owner of the coop (Fujiwara-san) quickly changed his decision early in the morning that declared today is a harvest day.
Hikoroichi is a countryside just outside of Ofunato. Farmers own small parcels of lands where they cultivate, but their lands is not large enough nor cost effective for them to own machinery to cultivate. A cooperative was created more than 10 years ago with around 65 members, and every year the cooperative, which owns the farm machines, plants and/or harvest rice for the members. There is usually two teams doing the work. One team assigned to do the harvesting, bring back the rice and put in dryers. The other team put the dried rice in bags and brings it back to the owners. Today, I was assigned to help on the rice harvest. The first work of the day is to clear the four corners of the lot that the combine cannot harvest effectively and make sure the combine can navigate thru the paddies. Then help with bringing the rice to the dryers. Today we were assigned to harvest three farms with total of 14 small lots. Owners of the lots were nice and they brought snacks for us.
Usually, the harvest is done on a dry paddies but due to the heavy rain last night, the work is a little bit muddy. It was a back breaking work but a satisfying work at the end of the day.
I planned also to help the next day, but due to the rain, the work is cancelled again. Two out of the three volunteer days was out due to the uncooperative weather. I decided to head home in the morning rather than wait for the night bus. So I took the morning bus to Ichinoseki and rode the Shinkansen back home.
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| Combine emptying the rice cargo. |
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| Life as a farmer is hard! |
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| Before my work... |
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| After my work... |
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| and the final work... |
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